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That’s pretty wild as a childhood desire;even wilder as a grown man’s admission. There’s narcissism here. It’s like watching Princess Diana’s doe-eyed Queen of Hearts interview. You know you’re being manipulated but it’s weirdly seductive,despite its evident admixture of power-lust.
At least Diana’s schtick,though,was compassion. Peterson’s is selfishness or,as Gore Vidal said of Ayn Rand (who titled her essay collectionThe Virtue of Selfishness),“one for one and none for all”. Peterson regards himself as profoundly shaped by Judaeo-Christian ethics yet somehow Christianity’s core principle – do unto others – doesn’t figure.
Consider Peterson’s stance on gender. I admire his preparedness to say that to stamp out harassment in the workplace women should consider not wearing high-heels and makeup. It might not work (harassment is as much about power as sex),but proposing it is not tantamount to''she was asking for it''.
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Then Peterson gets nutty. He insists there’s no gender pay gap. He consistently identifies the masculine with order and the feminine with primordial chaos (awaiting order). And in subtitling his12 Rules''an antidote for chaos''he implies that what the world needs is not less but more masculine order,when the truth is self-evidently the opposite.
The feminine is not chaos. More plausibly,it’s the order of nature which – as the extinction emergency shows – we must respect more and dominate less.
But Peterson’s fame really only skyrocketed with his “Professor Against Political Correctness” launch into the pronoun debate. Canada was discussing its anti-hate speech Bill,C-16. Peterson said he would never yield to forced speech and would risk jail to defend his choice of pronouns. So far,fine.
Peterson’s arguments are intensely emotive,building and exploiting fear. They’re also wrong. TheBill,now law,did not mention pronouns and Peterson’s insistence on''he''and''she''never risked jail. A saner argument would have said''although I disagree,I’ll use'they'out of respect''.
But this was deliberate provocation. It was Peterson-the-shaman at work,fuelling that same group hysteria against which Peterson-the-philosopher so eloquently and insistently warns.
The Rise of Jordan Petersonscreens in selected cinemas in NSW and Victoria over coming weeks.